Question

In PHP, I see the word cURL in many PHP projects. What is it? How does it work?

Reference Link: cURL

Answer 1

cURL is a library that lets you make HTTP requests in PHP. Everything you need to know about it (and most other extensions) can be found in the PHP manual.

In order to use PHP’s cURL functions
you need to install the » libcurl
package. PHP requires that you use
libcurl 7.0.2-beta or higher. In PHP
4.2.3, you will need libcurl version 7.9.0 or higher. From PHP 4.3.0, you will need a libcurl version that’s
7.9.8 or higher. PHP 5.0.0 requires a libcurl version 7.10.5 or greater.

You can make HTTP requests without cURL, too, though it requires allow_url_fopen to be enabled in your php.ini file.

// Make a HTTP GET request and print it (requires allow_url_fopen to be enabled)
print file_get_contents('http://www.example.com/');